Fragile Solidarities: Black Women, Suffrage, and the Future of Voting Rights

In 2018, voters in Florida voted to re-enfranchise over 1 million formerly incarcerated people. This substantial act of re-enfranchisement could possibly shift electoral power and the political landscape of this swing state as well as of this nation. Voting rights are and always have been one of the most contentious and significant collection of rights. For marginalized groups, the denial of these rights created second-class citizenship, systemic inequality, and representational disparities and invisibility. Black women, specifically those who fought for suffrage and those who now fight for voting rights for the formerly incarcerated recognize(d) the power of voting rights and the consequences of limiting who has access to voting rights. From the Black women who marched in the nation’s capital in March 1913 to grassroots organizers mounting campaigns for voting rights in the 2010s, uphill battles for de facto and de jure suffrage continue. The legacy of Black women suffragists of the early twentieth century anchor contemporary voting rights activism. This paper will critically consider this legacy alongside the legacy of failed solidarities as it pertains to mobilizing for universal suffrage.